Western legal imperialism: Thinking about the deep historical roots

Theoretical Inquiries in Law

Volumn 10, Issue 2, 2009, Pages

  Whitman, James Q ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 68349089023     PISSN: None     EISSN: 15653404     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2202/1565-3404.1218     Document Type: Article

References (76)

1. Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Best-Connected Were Sent to Rebuild Iraq, WASH. POST, Sept. 17, 2006, at A1.
2. UGO MATTEI & LAURA NADER, PLUNDER: WHEN THE RULE OF LAW IS ILLEGAL (2008), for example at 64 for the focus on Anglo-American material.
3. EDMUND HUSSERL, DIE KRISIS DER EUROPAISCHEN WISSENSCHAFTEN UND DIE tRANSZENDENTALE pHANOMENOLOGIE 16 (1977).
4. ERNST TROELTSCH, DIE SOZIALLEHREN DER cHRISTLICHEN KIRCHEN UND GRUPPEN 156-65 (1912).
5. The definition of "Western law" is of course open to debate. Readers might reasonably wonder, for example, whether the Byzantine or Soviet traditions should be counted as "Western." Nevertheless, my focus in this Article is on legal traditions with roots in the Latin Christendom of the Middle Ages - traditions like those of England, Germany, France and Iberia. These are also regions that participated in the overseas colonial adventures of the sixteenth through early twentieth centuries. i gladly acknowledge, however, that the problem of defining "Western law" deserves a less casual treatment than i give it here.
6. IRAM. LAPIDUS, AHISTORY OF ISLAMIC SOCIETIES 242-52 (1988);
7. CLAUDE CAHEN, L'I sLAM DES ORIGINES AU DEBUT DE L'EMPIRE OTTOMAN 54-60 (1995).
8. See, e.g., WAEL B. HALLAQ, A HISTORY OF ISLAMIC LEGAL THEORIES (1997).
9. BABER JOHANSEN, CONTINGENCY IN A SACRED LAW: LEGAL AND ETHICAL NORMS IN THE MUSLIM Fiqh 219-37 (1999).
10. For memorable observations, see F.W. MOTE, IMPERIAL CHINA, 900-1800 (1999), for example at 383.
11. E.g. , GEOFFREY MACCORMACK, THE SPIRIT OF TRADITIONAL CHINESE LAW 4 (1996).
12. Martha Nussbaum, Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism, 19 BOSTON REV. (Oct.-Nov. 1994), available at http: //bostonreview.net/BR19.57nussbaum.html.
13. RICHARD A. BAUMAN, HUMAN RIGHTS IN ANCIENT ROME (2000).
14. TONY HONOR E, ULPIAN : PIONEER OF HUMAN RIGHTS 76, 80 (2d ed. 2002) for the Stoic influence on Ulpian.
15. G. Inst. 1.1.
16. Jeremy Waldron, Foreign Law and the Modern Ius Gentium, 119 HARV. L. REV. 129, 133 (2005).
17. E.g., SERENA QUERZOLI, IL SAPERE DI FIORENTINO: eTICA, nATURA e lOGICA nELLE iNSTITUTIONES 88 (1986);
18. HERBERT WAGNER, STUDIEN ZUR ALLGEMEINEN RECHTSLEHRE DES GAIUS 273 (1978).
19. Laurens Winkel, The Peace Treaties of Westphalia as an Instance of the Reception of Roman Law, in PEACE TREATIES AND INTERNATIONAL LAW: FROM tHE LATE MIDDLE AGES TO WORLD WAR ONE 222, 225-29 (Randall Lesaffer ed., 2004).
20. TROELTSCH, supra note 4, at 156-65 (quoted language at 163).
21. For a careful statement on the difficulty of saying to what extent the city-state form is found in other parts of the world, see Tom B. Jones, Foreword to THE CITY-STATE IN FIVE CULTURES, at xv (Robert Griffeth & Carol G. Thomas eds., 1981).
22. TROELTSCH, supra note 4, at 157.
23. CLAUDE NICOLET, LE METIER DE CITOYEN DANS LA ROME REPUBLICAINE 40(1979).
24. Quoted language from STEPHEN BREYER, ACTIVE LIBERTY: INTERPRETING OUR DEMOCRATIC CONSTITUTION 29 (2006).
25. For recent literature, see, for example, Roger s. Bagnall, Evidence and Models for the Economy of Roman Egypt, in THE ANCIENT ECONOMY: EVIDENCE AND MODELS, at 1995
26. (J.G. Manning & Ian Morris eds., 2005); Paul P.M. Erdkamp, Beyond the Limits of the 'Consumer City': A Model of the Urban and Rural Economy in the Roman World, 50 HISTORIA 332 (2001).
27. The arguments of the economic historians run at cross purposes with those of legal historians. To take one example, Bagnall's observation in the chapter cited that there were craftsmen producing for sale in the Roman cities tells us little about the core concepts of the law that governed those cities, and threatens to obscure the fundamental constitutional point that guild-dominated cities of the medieval type are (or so i take it) not to be found in antiquity.
28. The generalization that I offer here demands more careful discussion than I can give it in this Article. outsiders in the modern world are certainly sometimes permitted to participate in some of the privileges of citizenship - for example, they may be given access to public schooling or public health. Nevertheless, my claim is that even such partially privileged outsiders, in the modern world, are still understood to be outsiders. They are not, as it were, members for a particular purpose. In this respect, antiquity was different: It was possible, as it were, to be admitted only to the outer circles of initiation into citizenship, while being in a meaningful sense an initiate.
29. See DAVID J. BEDERMAN, INTERNATIONAL LAW IN ANTIQUITY 127-28, 130-35(2001).
30. E.g., Ioanna Kralli, Athens and the Hellenistic Kings (338-261 B.C.): The Language of the Decrees, 50 CLASSICAL Q. 122 (2000).
31. See generally A.N. SHERWIN-WHITE, THE ROMAN CITIZENSHIP 108-16, 119-33 (2ded. 1973).
32. P.A. BRUNT, ITALIAN MANPOWER, 225 B.C.-A.D. 14 (1971), for example at 239-44.
33. SHERWIN-WHITE, supra note 27, at 386-94; PAOLADONATI GIACOMINI & GABRIELLA pOMA, cLTTADINI e NON cITTADINI nEL mONDO rOMANO: gUIDA aI tESTI e aI dOCUMENTI 165-68 (1996).
34. E.g., Mason Hammond, The Classical Tradition in Political Theory and Experience and Its Survival, 51CLASSICAL J. 177 (1956).
35. For one particularly skeptical account, see HARMUT WOLFF, DIE CONSTITUTIO ANTONINIANAUND PAPYRUS GISSENSIS 40 I (1976).
36. Querzoli, supra note 16, at 132-65.
37. E.g., Ernst Schonbauer, Eine neue wichtige Inschrift zum Problem der Constitutio Antoniniana, 14IURA 71, 89-90 (1963).
38. Id., for the growing distinctions between honestiores and humiliores in this period.
39. SHERWIN-WHITE, supra note 27, at 388-90, contests the view of some scholars that rustics were excluded entirely from the operation of the Constitutio. Even he does not suggest, though, that the grant was truly universal in the countryside. In any case, the point remains that membership in a civitas, even if only a notional one, set the norm.
40. W. W. BUCKLAND & ARNOLD D. MCNAIR, ROMAN LAW AND COMMON LAW 60 (2ded. 1952).
41. RAMSAY MACMULLEN, ROMAN SOCIAL RELATIONS, 50 B.C. to 284 A.D., at 28-35(1974).
42. Henry Kahane & Renee Kahane, Christian and Un-Christian Etymologies, 57'HARV. THEOLOGICAL REV. 33-34 (1964).
43. PAUL FREEDMAN, IMAGES OF THE MEDIEVAL PEASANT (1999).
44. TROELTSCH, supra note 4, at 157.
45. J.H.W.G. LIEBESCHUETZ, THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN CITY (2001); for the contrast with the Eastern Mediterranean, see Kenneth G. Holum, The Classical City in the Sixth Century: Survival and Transformation, in THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO THE AGE OF JUSTINIAN 87 (M. Maas ed., 2005).
46. HENRI PIRENNE, MAHOMET ET CHARLEMAGNE (Alcan 3d ed. 1937) (1922).
47. This raises issues that require much deeper discussion than i can give it here. The spread of law from the monasteries out into the non-monastic world is, i would suggest, one of the key themes in the development of the Western legal tradition, but this is not the place to investigate it.
48. Stephen D. White, Feuding and Peacemaking in the Touraine Around 1100, 42 TRADITIO 195 (1986).
49. HAROLD J. BERMAN, LAW AND REVOLUTION: THE FORMATION OF THE WESTERN LEGAL TRADITION 889 (1985).
50. For a discussion with many further references, see, for example, Don Denny, The Last Judgment Tympanum at Autun: Its Sources and Meaning, 57 SPECULUM 532 (1982).
51. For examples, see the survey of W.H. VON DER MULBE, DIE DARSTELLUNG DES jUNGSTEN GERICHTS AN DEN rOMANISCHEN UND gOTISCHEN KIRCHENPORTALEN FRANKREICHS (1911);
52. LINUS BIRCHLER, ZurKarolingischenArchitektur undMalerei, in FRUHMITTELALTERLICHE KUNST IN DEN ALPENLANDERN 225 (1954).
53. VON DER MULBE, supra note 46, at 78.
54. Gerhard Buchda, Magdeburger Recht, in 3 HANDWORTERBUCH ZUR dEUTSCHEN RECHTSGESCHICHTE 134 passim (Adalbert Erler ed., 1984).
55. Anthony M. Stevens-Arroyo, The Inter-Atlantic Paradigm: The Failure of Spanish Medieval Colonization of the Canary and Caribbean Islands, 3 5COMP. STUD. SOC'Y & HIST. 515 (1993);
56. FROM RECONQUEST TO EMPIRE: THE IBERIAN BACKGROUND TO LATIN AMERICAN HISTORY (H.B. Johnson ed., 1970).
57. FROM RECONQUEST TO EMPIRE: THE IBERIAN BACKGROUND TO LATIN AMERICAN HISTORY, supra note 49.
58. In a private communication, Lauren Benton argues that I should emphasize that the encomienda did not confer real property rights of the kind we are accustomed to seeing in modern law. Like other forms of feudal law, it created a relationship between persons and persons, not between persons and things. Professor Benton believes that this feudal character of the encomienda may help explain its eventual demise in the Americas, and I have no reason to doubt her. Nevertheless, I stand by the claim that this feudal legal institution, like others, was fundamentally oriented toward the exploitation of real property in the countryside.
59. For the rejection of the nineteenth-century tradition, notably by Pernice and Schulz, see A. ARTHUR SCHILLER, ROMAN LAW: MECHANISMS OF DEVELOPMENT 562-63(1978).
60. For the commonplace that custom was not a source of law for the classical Roman jurists, and for comments on the slow shift that began (as Halperin rightly says) in late antiquity,
61. see FRANZ WIEACKER, ROMISCHE RECHTSGESCHICHTE: QUELLENKUNDE, RECHTSBILDUNG, JURISPRUDENZ uND RECHTSLITERATUR 499502 (1988);
62. BURKHARD SCHMIEDEL, CONSUETUDO IM kLASSISCHEN UND nACHKLASSISCHENR OMISCHEMRECHT (1966). We do find in some of the inscriptional evidence Roman pledges to respect the "leges ius et consuetudo" of certain localities.
63. See LUCIO BOVE, LA CONSUETUDINE NEL dIRITTO rOMANO 52-55 (1971). But the very phrase suggests that custom was understood as simply one of many ways of conceiving of possible sources of law, and, as Wieacker sharply notes, there is no sign that these grants of "privilegi et esezioni" (id. at 52) led the Roman jurists to imagine that Roman law itself could be understood as a body of customary law, as would be the case of later European systems. WIEACKER, supra, at 502.
64. Jean-Louis Halperin, The Concept of Law: A Western Transplant? , 10 THEORETICAL INQUIRIES L. 333 (2009).
65. Since the initial publication of the Tabula Banasitana, cited by Halperin, in id. at 340 n.19, scholars have come to doubt the claim that the critical phrase "salvo iure gentis" has anything to do with a recognition of local customary law.
66. See, e.g., SHERWLN-WHLTE, supra note 27, at 312, 382-83 (Tabula Banasitana about dual citizenship, not custom) and WOLFF, supra note 31, at 99-100 (tax privileges at issue). The same is true of ALFREDO MORDECHAI RABELLO, THE JEWS IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE (2000), cited by Halperin, supra note 54, at 340 n.18, which declares, not that Jewish customary law was recognized by the Romans, but that Jews were to be judged "secundum propriae civitatis iura" (at 144) in a system in which they were understood, in classic city-state terms, as "incolae" or "peregrini" (at 142). For more discussion by the same author of the point that Jews were understood as "peregrini alicuius civitatis, " see Alfredo Mordechai Rabello, La situazione giuridica degli ebrei nell'Impero Romano, in GLI EBREI nELL'IMPERO ROMANO 125 (Ariel Lewin ed., 2001). The distinction between respecting foreign citizens and respecting foreign customs may seem subtle, but it reflects very deep differences in the conceptualization of the legal world.
67. Franck Roumy, Lex consuetudinaria, Jus consuetudinarium. Recherche sur la naissance du concept de droit coutumier aux XIe et XIIe siecles, 79REVUE hISTORIQUE DU dROIT fRANCAIS ET eTRANGER 257 (2001);
68. Robert Jacob, Les coutumiers du XIIIe siecle ont-ils connu la coutume, in LA cOUTUME AU vILLAGE dANS l'EUROPE mEDIEVALE ET mODERNE 102 (M. Mousnier & J. Poumarede eds., 2001);
69. Robert Jacob, Beaumanoir vs. Revigny: The Two Faces of Customary Law in Philip the Bold's France, in ESSAYS ON THE POETIC AND LEGAL WRITINGS OF PHILIPPE DE REMY AND HIS SON PHILIPPE DE BEAUMANOIR OF THIRTEENTH- CENTURY FRANCE 221 (Sarah-Grace Heller & Michelle Reichert eds., 2001).
70. These paragraphs summarize material presented at greater length, and with further
71. citations, in James Q. Whitman, Why Did the Revolutionary Lawyers Confuse Custom andReason, 58U.CHI. L. REV. 1321 (1991).
72. WOODROW BORAH, JUSTICE BY INSURANCE: THE GENERAL INDIAN COURT IN COLONIAL MEXICO AND THE LEGAL AIDES OF THE HALF-REAL 34 (1983).
73. Id. at 37, 38-39 passim.
74. BERNARD S. COHN, Some Notes on Law and Change in North India, in AN ANTHROPOLOGIST AMONG THE HISTORIANS AND OTHER ESSAYS 568 (1987).
75. PERCIVAL SPEAR, TWILIGHT OF THE MUGHULS : STUDIES IN LATE MUGHUL DELHI 110(1973).
76. Id.